Putin and Erdogan bury hatchet – but no sign of Rosneft boss

Uncertainty surrounded the outcome of yesterday’s late-night talks between Vladimir Putin and his Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the Russian president’s Sochi resident despite Putin’s insistence that relations had been restored “almost in full.”. On emerging from a one-on-one discussions that lasted two and a half hours to face the press, the chair designated to Rosneft’s CEO Igor Sechin was conspicuously empty, giving rise to speculation that the Russian energy plans to export gas from Kurdistan to the West via Turkey had hit a speed bump. Putin backed his claim that peace had broken out almost exactly two years after a Turkish fighter shot down a Russian Su-24 bomber over Syria years ago by citing a 26% increase in turnover over the past nine months, and pointing out the progress that had been made on two key joint projects – the laying of the Turkish Stream pipeline along the bed of the Black Sea (Gazprom) and the construction of the Akkuyu nuclear power plant on Turkey’s Mediterranean coastline. The first reactor is expected to be operational by 2023, according to Putin, whom Erdogan invited to attend a ceremony to mark the pouring of the first concrete into the plant’s foundations.